NORTH KOREA blew up sections of unused roads linking it with South Korea today, prompting Seoul’s troops to fire warning shots.

The incident followed an exchange of threats between the two rivals after the North claimed that the South had flown drones over its capital Pyongyang.

Two roads and two railway lines were built in the 2000s, an era of co-operation, to reconnect the two countries across their heavily fortified border.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has vowed to sever relations with South Korea and abandon the goal of peaceful unification.

Experts say it is unlikely that Mr Kim will order a pre-emptive, large-scale attack on South Korea because of a fear of retaliation by its southern neighbour and the United States.

In response to the explosions, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that its troops had fired a warning within southern sections of the border.

Seoul’s Unification Ministry, which handles relations with Pyongyang, separately condemned the North’s detonations as a “highly abnormal” and “regressive” measure that violated previous inter-Korean agreements.

North Korea has a history of staging the choreographed destruction of facilities on its own soil to send a political message.

In 2020, it blew up an empty, South Korean-built liaison office just north of the border in retaliation for civilian leafleting campaigns by Seoul.

The North has accused the South of infiltrating drones to drop propaganda leaflets over Pyongyang three times this month, and threatened to respond with force if it happens again.

South Korea has refused to confirm whether it sent drones, but it warned that North Korea would face the end of its regime if the safety of the South’s citizens was threatened.